"And Nancy Turner's with him!"
"No; it's Nancy Lovell," announced Aunt Naomi, in a voice audible all
over the vestry. "They were married in Boston."
The bridal couple advanced. All about the room the ladies rose, but
instead of greeting the newcomers, they looked at the "three widows,"
and waited as if to give them first an opportunity of accosting their
mate, thus returned as if from the very grave, and so inopportunely
bringing another mate with him. Miss Burrage and Miss Foster shrank from
sight behind the backs of those nearest to them; but Mattie Seaton swept
impulsively forward with her hand extended cordially. Her crisp black
hair curled about her temples, her eyes shone, and her teeth flashed
between her red lips.
"Why, Archie, dear," she said, in her clear, resonant voice, "we thought
we had lost you forever. We all supposed you were dead, and here you are
only married. Let me congratulate you, though after being engaged to
so many girls, it must seem queer to be married to only one!--and you,
Nancy," she went on, before Archie could make other reply than to shake
hands; "to think you got him after all, just because you went ahead and
caught him! I congratulate you with all my heart; only look out for him.
He'll make love to every woman he sees."
She bent forward and kissed the bride before Mrs. Lovell could have
known her intention, and turned quickly.
"Come, Delia," she called across the vestry; "come, Mary! There's
nothing for us to do but to go home and take off our black. We may have
better luck next time!"
With this ambiguous observation, which might have been construed to
cast rather a sinister reflection upon the return to life of the young
lieutenant, she swept out of the vestry, complete mistress of the
situation; and although Archie Lovell always strenuously denied that he
had ever been engaged to any woman besides the one he married, a general
feeling prevailed in Tuskamuck that no girl could have carried it off
with a high hand as Mattie did, if she had not had some sort of an
understanding to serve her as a support.
But never again while the Civil War lasted did a girl in Tuskamuck put
on black for a lover unless the engagement had been publicly recognized
before his death.